


Before dawn (The air smells of lemons)

by RafuMeika



Series: The sky broke like an egg into full sunset (And the water caught fire) [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Bittersweet, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Idiots in Love, M/M, No Beta We Die Like Uchiha Shisui Throwing Himself Off A Cliff, i swear they'll be the death of me, they don't communicate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29945115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RafuMeika/pseuds/RafuMeika
Summary: Ao knows, deep down, deep enough that he can decide not to acknowledge it, that if Shisui were to ask him to stay he would stay. For tonight, for today, for every day, it didn’t matter to him. He would stay and he would be unable to leave, so maybe it was better if he were to go away before Shisui could ask him such a thing.
Relationships: Ao/Uchiha Shisui
Series: The sky broke like an egg into full sunset (And the water caught fire) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2168316
Kudos: 3





	Before dawn (The air smells of lemons)

Ao is not a coward, or at least this is what he likes to tell himself every time he slips away in the middle of the night, before the sun can even peek through the horizon.

He is not a coward, he tells himself as he moves silent like a ghost to not wake his _companion_ , getting dressed in total silence before leaving ( _ ~~running away~~_ ).

Ao is not a coward, he just knows his weaknesses very well, and he knows that if he stays too long, if he linger enough to enjoy a lazy morning together, warm cuddles, maybe even some slow morning sex, he’ll never be able to go back home.

( _"Home is where your heart is," Shisui had told him once, when Ao had finally found the courage to ask him why he always wanted to go back to a village as fucked up as Konoha, and since then Ao has never really felt home back in his village._ )

( _And Ao is also a hypocrite, because Kiri is as fucked as Konoha is if not worse. The difference is, Kiri doesn’t hide it, and Ao likes the honesty._ )

The view, every almost-morning that is also not-night, is different and yet the same. The sky outside the window is beginning to slowly light up, second after second. There is not the orange-ish light of the dawn yet, but the stars have already started to disappear.

It’s a beautiful sight, but Ao never looks at the sky when he’s ready to go away. Instead, his blue eye is always drawn to the sleeping figure under the cover.

Ao never knows if Shisui is really asleep or not, but sometimes he wishes that he wasn’t. As his hand reaches out to brush Shisui’s cheek, Ao hopes that the boy would open his eyes and stop him before he could leave.

How would it be to hear Shisui’s rough, morning voice? Was Shisui even a morning person? Would he drag Ao back in bed so that they could sleep a bit more, together?

Ao knows, deep down, deep enough that he can decide not to acknowledge it, that if Shisui were to ask him to stay he would stay. For tonight, for today, for every day, it didn’t matter to him. He would stay and he would be unable to leave, so maybe it was better if he were to go away before Shisui could ask him such a thing.

Not that it mattered. Ao is pretty sure that Shisui would never ask him to stay, because outside of a good fuck they were enemies. Ao was the stupid one between the two.

( _That’s why he can’t stay, Ao thinks. He is falling for the boy and he doesn’t know how to land. He’s not an emotional man, he’s never been. He’s calm and prideful and he has never loved someone before, he prefers logical thinking over anything else and he knows that love makes one stupid and reckless._

 _If Shisui were to be in danger within Ao’s eyesight, he knows that he would lose it._ )

And Ao always loses precious minutes during those almost-mornings, struggling between going and staying, his mind like broken in two. As he watches Shisui’s peaceful face, eyes closed and body relaxed.

 _I could kill him right now_ , Ao sometimes thinks, his fingers almost _itching_ to trace mindless patterns on Shisui’s naked, warm skin. _I could kill him and he wouldn’t be able to defend himself._

And i’ts frightening to think something like that, because it forces Ao to see how much Shisui trusts him. It makes him unease, it makes his skin crawl and his mind spin, because he cannot, for the life of him, understand why Shisui decides to trust him like that.

Sometimes, Ao thinks that maybe Shisui is just over-confident in his own abilities.

( _Sometimes, Ao thinks that there might be something else under it all, because you don’t trust someone you don’t care about._

 _And then Ao takes that thought and pushes it as far away as it can go, because if he goes down that path, if he lets himself hope, he’s never coming back._ )

Curling his lips in a light scowl, Ao eventually, always and inevitably, convinces himself to step away from the bed.

And everything is where it should be, every weapon in its place, nothing is left behind, not a single proof of his passage, there is no visible mark on his body and his appearance is as impeccable as always.

( _And nothing is where it should be, because Ao is not in bed and Shisui is not in his arms, and no matter what time of the year it is, it’s always cold this early in the not-quite-morning and not-night-anymore, while he knows that in bed, under the blanket, he’ll be warm and happy and satisfied._ )

And Ao eventually, finally, goes away. He opens the window just enough to slip outside, the crisp and cold air clinging to him as soon as he’s put as the last remnants of warmth leave his body.

( _Every almost-morning that is also not-night, Shisui watches in silence as Ao slips out of the window without making a single sound, the man’s back disappearing from his sight in a moment._

_Every almost-morning that is also not-night, Shisui rolls over to the other side of the bed as soon as he’s alone, the mattress slowly cooling as the boy presses his face in the pillow, taking in the lingering scent and committing it to memory._

_After all, Ao would never stay if he were to ask._ )

**Author's Note:**

> And so continues my quest to make this pairing known.  
> These two idiots will be the death of me one of these days.  
> I wanted to make it pure fluff at first but I can't let my favorite characters have happy things, now, can I?  
> I swear I'm gonna write some fluff at some point, because they deserve it, but I guess for now they just pine in silence while getting a good fuck out of each other without ever acknowledging their respective feelings.  
> Eeeh. That's how it is I guess.  
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little thing~


End file.
